Daddy Warbucks

Today, a Thanksgiving dinner to feed 10 folks costs more than ever — well, just a little more.
The American tradition of a big family meal, however, is dying.
The meals today are more or less shared by families, friends and neighbors — more than just all the kith and kin coming from all over the map to grandma’s house.
The American Farm Bureau and its counterpart here in Arkansas are telling us the traditional meal costs more — even in this downturn economy. The cost of such a meal rose about $5 this year.
The turkey — longstanding fare and raised right here at home in the Ozarks — costs more per pound as corn and grain prices are climbing up, up and up on local farmers.
The high price of corn, the poultry folks say, is related to the ethanol gas mix.
It seems a government subsidy to make more fuel out of corn has kept prices high — so high that the poultry folks are about to start a groundswell movement to halt such federal subsidiaries.
The economic playing field between the farm and big oil needs to level out. But will it?
Are we going to pay $5 a pound for chicken?
Or $4 a gallon for gas?
Or both?
Happy Thanksgiving, gentle readers!

lll

More and more telephone books are going the way of the rotary dial phone. That little gadget on your cellphone that lets you store all the numbers you need and that other little gadget of Al Gore’s Internet that lets you find a telephone number (or Web address) has all but made the paper telephone directories obsolete.
And Ma Bell and all her cronies are in an advertising freefall. The number of pages of ads has long outpaced the pages of actual printed numbers.
All the phone books in the region — be they the Red Book, Green Book, Names and Numbers or the old SW Bell books — rely upon cheap, shoddy and faulty means of distribution.
Throwing a plastic-wrapped telephone directory in the driveway is certainly no way to get delivery done.
Next time one of those slick-talking boiler-room sales people call you Mr. Businessman to have a phone directory advertisement, ask them if you can swing by their strip-mall address and simply toss your check out on the pavement.
It seems to work for them.

Rest In Peace.
J.B. Hunt, the man who founded the trucking firm, was laid to rest in a newly completed cemetery complex of both in-ground and above-ground burials developed after his death in 2007.
The new cemetery, located in the Pinnacle Development, in Rogers, is quite a showplace. And one that is available to area citizens — at a price. The development is a for-profit cemetery, but a nice one.

lll

Our hat is off to the 2012 Arkansas Business Hall of Famers. The event to be Feb. 10 in Little Rock, will honor quite a quartet. The inductees are:
w John Ed Anthony, a timber baron from Bearden
w Wayne Cranford, the ad/public relations man from Little Rock
w Walter E. Hussman Jr., a newspaper scion who hails from Camden, but now lives in Little Rock
w Jack C. Shewmaker, a cattle rancher and former Walmart wrangler of Bentonville
Still no women on the list, but there is hope for 2013.
Tickets to this event are in the stratosphere range and corporate tables are also available for a price that will shame the stockholders.

lll

Sounds like former Razorback basketball coach John Pelphrey has done it again. He bought a fancy home in Fayetteville (as do all the coaches) and managed to turn it into a $300,000 loss when selling.
He can blame it on the economic downturn.
He can blame it on his bad timing.
He can blame it on location or the Kentucky blue presence in the home.
He can blame it on the motion offense or he can tell us he will always be a Razorback. Yeah, right.